The importance of priority effects in restoring temperate forests understories after invasion

Heavily invaded forest understories are usually treated by implementing a single event of invasive plant removal, leaving the system to recover passively. However, these systems tend to experience low native species regeneration, and the understories are frequently re-invaded. Priority effects, or the order of species arrival, is a community assembly framework that can be a promising approach to restore forest understories. If lack of propagules is what is stalling recovery, then management practices that overcome this limitation could be implemented. We present results from an experiment testing whether priority effects are the mechanism driving native community assembly after invasive removal.